Currently, mobile devices support the ability to administer a variety of tones and signals (including vibrate) for various message types. However, if the device is placed into silent mode or vibrate mode, the previously administered audible tones/signals are suppressed and the device either vibrates (vibrate mode) or does not alert at all (silent mode). The deficiency of this design is that users who would like to receive alerts for urgent or emergency messages (e.g., phone calls, text messages, and/or emails) but suppress the altering for all other messages are forced to either leave the phone in normal mode when sleeping or risk not detecting the vibration when in other environments, e.g. meeting, entertainment performance, etc. Thus, a need exists in the arts to provide functionality on a mobile device that provides capability to override the alert modes (e.g., the silent/vibrate mode) in instances when an urgent or emergency message is received.